The Virginian

Monday, April 30, 2012

EPA Official Resigns Over "Crucify" Comments

A regional bureau chief at the Environmental Protection Agency resigned Sunday after his harsh comments about regulatory enforcement sparked criticism from Republicans.

Al Armendariz had headed up an office overseeing Texas and four other south-central states since being appointed by President Barack Obama in November 2009.

"I have come to the conclusion that my continued service will distract you and the agency from its important work," Mr. Armendariz wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on Sunday.

Ms. Jackson accepted the resignation and said in a statement that the EPA was "grateful for Dr. Armendariz's service to EPA and to our nation."

House Republicans had called for the firing of Mr. Armendariz after a 2010 video surfaced last week where he likened the agency's enforcement strategy to that of Roman conquerors who would "crucify" bad actors to deter future crimes.

Obama: "A pit bull is delicious."

Secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, at a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing. It is frightening to watch the ignorance and arrogance of this Obama appointee who has an incredible amount of power over us when asked simple questions about what government is limited from doing.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

A Cool President gets a Cool Secret Service.

Before Cartagena, before it was revealed that every member of the advance team met up with hookers, what was your impression of the Secret Service?

Mine was that of men who were human shields.Men whose job it was to take a bullet meant for the President.Stony faced men who wore darks suits and ties and who had an earpiece in one ear with a spiral cord that went down their shirt collar.What were they after work?Somehow the idea of “after work” for a Secret Service agent was not part of the image, but if someone had asked me I would have come up with a young to middle-aged family man with a wife and 2.3 children who went to church, visited his parents farm in Iowa once a year and saluted the flag when it came by.

That’s why the guys who picked up hookers in Cartagena did not fit the image.The image that I had created was definitely not “cool.”Not he “cool” of the hip Obama who smoked pot and snorted coke as a younger man.The guy with the crease in his pants that was so impeccable that it became the stuff of legend.

But Obama hangs with the cool kids, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Michelle and her finely toned arms, Tom Hanks and the rest of Hollywood royalty.Inevitably, the stone faced men who are there with him day and night reflect his cool.I’m sure they thought it was cool to get the best hookers in Cartagena for a little R&R while out on the town.It’s what cool guys do.

Twenty years ago, Los Angeles erupted in riots after four cops were acquitted in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, but during an uprising supposedly in the name of justice, some people got away with murder.
But the human toll is the most disturbing legacy of the riots.

Some 53 people were killed in what police have classified as riot-related homicides and accidents. Of those, some 22 homicides remain classified as open and unsolved.
The dead for whom justice remains elusive include a 15-year-old boy shot as he stood on a corner, a Good Samaritan who tried to douse flames set by a crowd of angry looters, a hard-working immigrant who insisted on making grocery deliveries even as his neighborhood burned, a suburban man shot when he came to check on his store and John Doe No. 80, whose identity may never be known.

Big Race™ incites the mob then scurries away, like the cowards they are, letting the dupes they incite get it in the neck while they get rich.

One person having difficulty getting a fit is Elizabeth Warren, a 2012 Democratic Senatorial candidate, who reacted to the reports that she billed herself as an ethnic minority in the 1990 by saying she had no idea she was presented as Native American until she read in the Herald that she had been touted by Harvard Law School as proof of their faculty’s diversity in the 1990s.

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Elizabeth Warren, "Native American"

The Left has claimed that race was not real, but a "construct." So we have

...the most infamous White Man in America: George Zimmerman. Zimmerman is descended from a mixed parentage which includes South American Indian and African. No matter, he’s White — a “White Latino” in fact.

Recently, Australian commentator Andrew Bolt was sued by Aborigines who claimed that simply because they had blond hair, blue and white skin didn’t mean they weren’t black. Only bigots would think that. The court agreed with them and ordered the newspaper to print the following notice on the site of the offending suggestion: that it was unlawful to suggest that “fair skin colour indicates a person … is not sufficiently Aboriginal to be genuinely identifying as an Aboriginal person.”

Australian Aborigine

Asians have become the new white:

A new study on physicians in California shows a glaring gap between the number of doctors of color compared with the state’s ethnically diverse population, especially among African Americans and Latinos.
At the same time, the state has a disproportionate number of Asian and white doctors, according to the UCSF study, which focuses on doctor ethnicity and language fluency.

For the Left, “white” is the new catchall for anyone they don’t like, who doesn’t play along with their race games, or who, like George Zimmerman can be made the Judas Goat for the sins, real or imagined of “white people” (whoever “they” are).

Check out the comments on this David Ignatius column in the Washington Post.

Mark Donner is not untypical:

Osama was a preacher, there's thousands of them.. unimportant personality so quit harping on him..America knows it can't destroy ideas and any offer of American ideas to replace them will be rejected because any American idea is simply a destructive disease. America is not 21st century, it's a destructive thing with no culture. America has zero "democracy" and American style "capitalism" slavery is trying to destroy the world and all life for materialistic greed and you want to enforce on that on others? The only way to do that is kill and enslave everybody who objects, which just happens to be the core of American "philosophy" and all that America has been offering

And Aaron Weiner:

This is a remarkably racist column.

"His movement is largely destroyed, but his passion for a purer and more Islamic government in the Arab world is partly succeeding." So, let's see...we must now equate all Islamists with Osama Bin Laden?

"13 seats in the new Egyptian Parliament": of 334. I have news for you: the nation just suffered a massive coup d'etat, and - surprise - there are Muslims looking to vote for Muslims there. That doesn't mean they're in power, just somewhat empowered. Should they get 170 seats, we should then be very worried.

Talking about dictatorial states like Syria and Yemen are hardly indicative of the Arab world as a whole.

And winning in America, too:
Cultural subjugation of women. Sure, a long way to go, but the direction is reversed and so-called "women's rights" going backward.

Bankrupting the U.S. - with the help of his allies at Goldman Sachs, BOFA, etc., corruption in military contracts, it's happening

Populace trained to yearn for time of imaginary utopias based on fundamentalist religion: on the rise!
Guns, guns, guns!
Populace trained to yearn for savage old-style justice system, like good People of the Book should!

American Taliban on the rise! Millionaires foot the bills, just like bin Laden did!

Mark Steyn comments on the Liberal's inability to see beyond their noses.

For their next exploding cigar, the Democrats chose polygamy. Brian Schweitzer, the Democrat governor of Montana, remarked that Romney was unlikely to appeal to women because his father was "born on a polygamy commune." Eighty-six percent of women, noted Gov. Schweitzer with a keenly forensic demographic eye, are "not great fans of polygamy." You can understand the 86 percent's ickiness at the whole freaky-weirdy idea of a president descended from someone who had multiple wives. Eww.

Just for the record, Romney's father was not a polygamist; Romney's grandfather was not a polygamist; his great-grandfather was a polygamist. Miles Park Romney died in 1904, so one can see why this would weigh heavy on 86 percent of female voters 108 years later.

Meanwhile, back in the female-friendly party, Obama's father was a polygamist; his grandfather was a polygamist; and his great-grandfather was a polygamist who had one more wife (five in total) than Romney's great-grandfather. It seems President Obama is the first male in his line not to be a polygamist. So, given the "gender gap," maybe those 86 percent of American women are way cooler with polygamy than Gov. Schweitzer thinks. Maybe these liberal chicks really dig it.

There is no doubt in my mind that NPR chicks dig polygamy … and dog meat if it will make them as cool as Obama. Rock bands have groupies, as do rock-star types like Obama.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Professor Jacobson makes a point worth repeating. As Obama dances in the end zone for his one military success, the Middle East is sliding into Islamofascism.

As they say in Bridge, let's review the bidding.

The short range purpose of invading Iraq was to insure that Saddam did not pass out WMDs to Islamic extremists like OBL. Mission accomplished and although we did not capture lots of WMDs after toppling Saddam, with him gone that option was closed.

The long-range purpose of going into Iraq, in my opinion, was to create a large military presence in a stable country so that the surrounding Muslim dictatorships would not come under the domination of Iran, and to provide a model for the Mid-eastern people to follow on the path to representative government.

Unfortunately, Obama happened.

The idea of Iraq as an American protectorate was abhorrent to him, so he made arrangements to dismantle our presence in Iraq. At the same time he sent some of our best troops to perform “Viet Nam – the Sequel” in Afghanistan, a war fought primarily for domestic political purposes; to prove that he really did believe IT was the “good war.” What is the strategic reason for fighting in Afghanistan? Does anyone remember?

Back to Iraq, that militarily naked country has become an Iranian protectorate. Once the region became unstable, the seeds were planted for regional revolution. Lacking an American presence, and more importantly an American President who doesn’t like the idea of American power, the most committed revolutionaries are winning out. And those revolutionaries are not idealistic college students and small shopkeepers who want a better life, but Islamic ideologues who are essentially 2, 3 many Osama bin Ladens.

What we’re seeing now in Egypt is something that might be called electoral bin Ladenism. Take the group Gamaa Islamiya, which under its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, made the first unsuccessful attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993. Today, the organization has formed a Salafist political party with the benign name Building and Development Party. This organization, which like al-Qaeda traces its roots to the Islamist theorist Sayyid Qutb, has 13 seats in the new Egyptian parliament.

“At least today it should be clear that a group capable of taking over a country with millions of people and running it for decades (the Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hizballah) is a greater threat than a group that can stage a few terror attacks each year. But it still isn't even on the radar of the Western mainstream debate or the Obama Administration's strategy.”

UPDATE 3: The Saudis closed their embassy in Cairo yesterday after demonstrations and attempts to storm the embassy by mobs. This follows the conviction of an Arab lawyer of insulting the Saudi king.

The problem for Egypt is that the country depends on the charity of its neighbors because it imports most of its food and is fast running out of money.

So when supplies get low, who’s going out handing out rations? You can bet the mortgage on your house that the Muslim Brotherhood is stocking up.

In short, if the Saudis don’t underwrite the IMF loan, the whole house of cards will collapse, and Egypt will run out of cash to buy food. Its cash reserves have fallen by two-thirds since Hosni Mubarak was ousted and barely cover two months’ worth of imports. That’s not good for a country that imports half its caloric consumption. The difference between Egypt and a banana republic is, no bananas. Guess who will ration bread at street level? The Muslim Brotherhood. That’s how Leninists or Nazis take power.

While Barack Hussein Obama is joking with the White House Press Corpse [spelling deliberate], the Arab Spring is bearing evil fruit.

It's in the Mariana Islands. Part of the problem is funding but by far the bigger problem is the benefits:

While the defined benefit program was designed to serve retirees and their spouses, the fund had permitted the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the first generation of retirees to receive benefits after the original retiree died, according to court documents.

These people thought they could give themselves and their children and grandchildren money forever. Keep in mind, this is a PUBLIC pension fund.

Kipling: Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turnThat Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would comeThat a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they enied she was even Dutch;They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrewAnd the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was trueThat All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make FourAnd the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of ManThere are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world beginsWhen all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

... some actually felt hurt by Savage’s comments, especially those aimed at religious beliefs. While some of his earlier comments were so strongly worded that they shook some of our audience members, it is never the intent of JEA or NSPA to let students get hurt during their time at our conventions.

The story line is that gay bullies are Christians who read Leviticus and Romans. And nothing will get between the story and reality.

“The first thing he told the audience was, ‘I hope you’re all using birth control,’” she told CitizenLink. “he said there are people using the Bible as an excuse for gay bullying, because it says in Leviticus and Romans that being gay is wrong. Right after that, he said we can ignore all the (expletive deleted) in the Bible.”
As the teenagers were walking out, Tuttle said that Savage heckled them and called them “pansy asses.”

... everyone knows that the successful killing was mainly the result of Obama’s brave decision, although the SEALs, the stealth helicopter pilots and the Air Force electronic cloaking crews probably helped a little.

Because the Obama administration is not interested in taking yet another victory lap over the SEALs killing Osama bin Laden almost a year ago, the president's counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, will get up early to be on several Sunday morning shows to recount how dramatic the incident was for those folks watching it unfold from the safety of the White House basement.

Carney has made a number of questionable statements as press secretary, however.
Carney told reporters in April that the president had never argued the Buffett Rule would solve the country’s deficit problems. But when the Buffett Rule was first introduced in September, President Obama claimed the tax would “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade.”

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Obama Solves the Illegal Immigrant Problem

Despite himself, Barack Obama is well on the way to solving the illegal flow of immigrants from Mexico. The American economy is so bad that Mexicans here illegally are hoofing it back to Mexico where economic growth is higher.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center the economy, among other things like tougher border patrol, has virtually stopped Mexican immigration to America.

It’s also caused over a million people to move back to Mexico in the last three years.

Moises Bantona immigrated from Peru so his son could be treated for Leukemia at St. Jude.

He has several friends moving back to Mexico, “The reason is the economic situation. It’s very important. If you don’t have enough money for living, for food and rent, you need to go back. That’s it.”

As Ann Coulter said:

...instead of using E-Verify to stop illegal aliens from taking American jobs, he did it by destroying the entire job market. Hmmmm, drug-war ravaged Ciudad Juarez, or Obama's America ... I'll take Juarez! Under the booming economy President Romney is going to produce, we're going to need a really high fence.

If we can only get the Obama administration to end “Fast & Furious,” running guns to Mexican drug cartels, the Mexican government may even be able to get violent crime under control. At that point, Mexico will have both a better economy and a better government.

That sound you hear is the press frantically trying to figure out how to update their ethnic style guides — is Zimmerman now a “black white Hispanic?” Or do we use the Obama standard (ever heard our historic POTUS called a “black white?” no you have not), in which case I guess Zimmerman is just… black.

In case you have not been following along, NBC edited the phone call made by George Zimmerman, taking out a question by the police dispatcher asking for Martin’s race. When Zimmerman replies “he looks black” the NBC editors removed the question and made it look as if Zimmerman was profiling Martin because he was black, heightening the story line that Zimmerman is racist.

NBC is owned by GE, the global company run by Jeff Immelt, close bud to Barack Obama, the company that does not pay taxes and the company that's the poster child for crony capitalism.

Well, it won’t bother them; we know that. It certainly won’t bother Barack Obama. Matthew Owens doesn’t look like his son, and there are no votes to be had. For Obama, if it doesn’t help his re-election campaign, it doesn’t exist. Whether he likes it or not, however, I think incidents like this one, which have multiplied all across America, will hurt Obama in the fall. Millions of Americans voted for Obama in part because they thought his election would put racial division to rest, or at least contribute to that goal. But the opposite has happened. Obama has been an extraordinarily divisive president; neither he nor others in his administration, like Eric Holder, have ever hesitated to foment race hatred when they thought it would serve the Democrats’ political interests. As it turned out, Obama’s election represented a setback for race relations in the United States, an outcome that virtually no one foresaw. This is just one way–but perhaps an important one–in which voters are disillusioned with Obama.

Let me disagree with John on one point. There is one person, with a very high profile, who has been dubbed by the Democrats as “the titular head of the Republican party” who foresaw worse race relations after Obama’s election: Rush Limbaugh.

Democrat Jon Corzine got about half a billion dollars from Goldman Sachs and used some of that money to buy a senate seat and the New Jersey governorship. Now, I suspect, he’s using some of that money to prevent his indictment for using customer money to pay off his losing bet on European bonds…over a billion dollars worth of customer money.

If there is a poster child for over-the-top Wall Street malfeasance, Jon Corzine is it. Yet a year after telling investigators that he doesn’t know where customers’ money went, there is no indictment. One can’t help but wonder if the reason is that he’s busy raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

Corzine proceeded to do exactly the sorts of things Wall Street has become infamous for: making crazy bets with other people's money, counting on governments to bail out the private sector and, allegedly, expecting to get friendly treatment from regulators. Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was an old friend and colleague of Corzine's at Goldman Sachs and in Washington. Gensler had been a key aide to Sen. Paul Sarbanes and had reportedly worked closely with Corzine writing the Sarbanes-Oxley bill. At MF Global, under Gensler's watch, Corzine bet more than $6 billion on the European sovereign debt crisis, using borrowed client money. MF Global also apparently commingled client and company funds to pay off financial obligations, which is illegal.

Goldberg misses one point; investment firms can’t “borrow” client money. Not ever. You cannot take money from segregated client accounts and use it to make investments for the firm. You can’t do that, and if you do you go to jail. Unless you are Jon Corzine and you are one of Barack Obama’s big campaign contributors and then you can expect the cops to back off, and live a life of ease on your half a billion in assets.

We may be seeing exactly how much it costs to buy a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Wealthy UBS banker Charles Wolf is major Obama contributor

One of President Obama’s largest financial backers is a key executive at the largest Swiss bank in the world, complicating his criticism of presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Robert Wolf is president of Swiss financial giant UBS Investment Bank and chairman of UBS Americas. He has been one of Obama’s most prolific fundraisers dating back to 2006, when the former Senator from Illinois initiated his run for the White House.

Swiss bank UBS was bailed out in 2008 by both the Swiss government by the the US taxpayer after leveraging itself over 50 to one in bonds. If borrow $100 for every $2 you own, you can be wiped out if your investments go down by 2%.
UBS, like GE, is trying to return to profitability on the back of US taxpayers by paying off Obama with campaign contributions.

Samantha Power began work today as chair of President Barack Obama's new Atrocities Prevention Board. If you don't remember Ms Power she once called for a US force to invade Israel and force through a "peace settlement." Powers also had some unflattering things to say about about America's Jewish population during the 2008 campaign

Monday, April 23, 2012

Obama still hasn’t addressed the American people about his dog eating. There are many unanswered questions such as is he sorry about and how many dogs has he eaten and when did he last eat one and will he promise to America’s children whether he’ll stop eating their puppies. People need to know, yet he stands their silent… perhaps digesting a dog.
And hey, Obama, it’s either talk about this or what a lousy president you are.

‘If I Wanted America to Fail.’

Sunday, April 22, 2012

The temptation of Pontius Pilate

Let me begin by saying that George Zimmerman is no Jesus, he’s just – in the immortal words of the NY Slimes – a “white Hispanic.” But as I walked into church this morning and saw the cross of Jesus on the wall the story of his crucifixion came to mind.

Earlier in the morning I read the Mansfield Frazier’s demand the Zimmerman should be convicted and jailed to avoid race riots. It struck me then how the Jewish mob 2000 years ago managed to get Jesus crucified.

For the unchurched among us let me review the plot. Jesus angered the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem who wanted him killed. They didn’t want to kill him themselves on feast days so they demanded that the Romans do it. The Romans, represented by Pontius Pilate, interrogated Jesus and did not find that he had broken any Roman law, so Pilate was going to let Jesus go. But that’s not what the mob wanted so they threatened Pilate, saying that if he let Jesus go he was “no friend of Caesar.” This was a serious political charge against a Roman governor and had the potential of a charge of treason against Pilate which could lead to execution.

Mansfield Frazier is demanding that the American people be Pontius Pilate. Frazier demands that we crucify George Zimmerman because if we don’t there will be mobs at our doors, and we will be told we are racists “no friend of black people.” And like Pilate, we may even be allowed to wash our hands.

The ultimate fate of Pilate, the man, is not known. We know he was recalled to Rome but not what befell him there. But his fame is all about a little trial in Jerusalem that ended in the crucifixion of Jesus to appease a mob. Washing his hands didn’t clear him of guilt. Acceding to injustice cannot be washed away, no matter how loudly the mob calls for blood.

It struck me as I left church that there is very little new under the sun, and I will not be part of a mob that’s Pontius Pilate writ large.

The Imperial Excesses of the Imperial Presidency

In “Grope and Change” Mark Steyn illustrates the way that the American President travels in the style that befits an oriental potentate with money as no object.

It is past time, way past time, to ask if these 40 car motorcades, the planes for the President, the First Lady, the planes carrying the imperial Presidential limousine and the others carrying the escort cars, the “advance team”, the “advance advance team”, the aides, cooks, hairdressers, and the rest of the royal court to be met by the organized crowds are the thing the president of a Republic needs or deserves.

The 21 dedicated public servants jetted in on the so-called car-planes, the big transports flying in the tinted-windowed black Suburbans for the presidential motorcade. The “car-plane” guys show up a few days in advance, but usually two weeks or so after the really advanced advance team has hit the ground. And there was nothing for them to do. There is no reason for them to be there.

This is such over-the-top excess that the advance team had literally nothing better to do that pick up hookers in Cartagena.

What we know so far is this: All eleven Secret Service men and all ten U.S. military personnel staying at the Hotel Caribe are alleged to have had “escorts” in their rooms that night. All of them. The entire team.

If millionaire Barack Obama wants to pay for such excess, we're happy to let him but as Steyn points out, it's on our dime.

But you suckers paid for them to fly to Cartagena, and they were enjoying those women on your time. On foreign trips, aside from the 40 or so armored limousines, there are usually 200 Secret Service agents plus a couple of dozen sniffer dogs. Did the latter take any Colombian bitches back to their kennels? Or are they just the entrée for Obama’s embassy banquet?

Is this trip unusual? No!

Just last month, it cost U.S. taxpayers half a million bucks to fly Obama and David Cameron to Dayton, Ohio, to pretend to enjoy a basketball game. I’ve attended previous “Summits of the Americas” and G7 meetings and other international confabs, and always heard the same story wearily retailed by representatives of the host nation — that the money-no-object Yanks are flying in a bigger and more disruptive presidential entourage than everybody else put together. At this point, the local official usually rolls his eyes, and mostly, but not always, leaves the thought unspoken:
“Americans! What do you expect?” The Queen routinely turns down requests from visiting U.S. presidents to reinforce the garden walls and replace the windows of Buckingham Palace — for an overnight stay.

Even if we had the money, it would be wretched excess, but we're now the brokest country in the history of the world. Who are we trying to impress?
Aside from the hookers, the way the wheels are coming off this government is best exemplified by the speech Obama made in Columbia where his abysmal lack of a real education made him – and us –look like a doofus.

For all the hooker-cavorting among a bored entourage with time on its hands, there was no one to proofread President Obama’s speech. So he stood up in public and attempted to pander to the Latins by referring to the sovereign British territory of the Falkland Islands by the designation of its temporary Argentine usurpers 30 years ago: “Las Malvinas.” Except that his writers got it wrong. So the president of the United States called it “the Maldives,” an entirely different bit of British Commonwealth real estate half a world away in the Indian Ocean.

Even I know that the Maldives are in the Indian Ocean. Remember when Dan Quayle read an incorrect spelling of potato on a cue card? When President Doofus screws up, the Imperial Press Corps turns its head and pretends not to notice.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) links to several comments that attack Romney for his faith. That's going to be the theme of the Obama campaign. They can't point to accomplishments - oh they can,but no one believes them - so they have to go for hate and bigotry.

The only problem is that they are preaching to the choir. They already have the base; the people who hate, the racists , the religious bigots, are already solidly on Obama's side.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE MARTIN-ZIMMERMAN CASE IN REVERSE?

Police are saying more about a shooting at a Taco Bell Tuesday night in which one man died. They’re also identifying the victim as 29-year-old Daniel Adkins.

About 7:30 p.m., a 22-year-old man and his girlfriend ordered food at the Taco Bell drive-thru and were told to pull up while their order was prepared.
At the same time, Adkins stepped around a corner into the path of the vehicle and angry words were exchanged between he and the driver. They got into an altercation and Adkins was shot once by the driver. He died at the scene.

The driver, a 22-year-old black male, called police but has not been arrested.
At first, the couple claimed that Adkins had a metal pipe that he swung at them — but it turns out he was holding a dog leash with his yellow lab on the other end. Family members want that driver arrested, but he’s claiming self-defense.

In this case the shooter’s name hasn’t been released, so at least he’s spared from Spike Lee tweeting his address.

But why don’t we know his name?
Like Florida, Arizona has a stand your ground law but nobody seems interested in any comparisons.

Can you imagine the furor if a “white hispanic” gunned down a black man with the mental capacity of a 12-year-old in a state governed by Jan Brewer? Heck, Obama would take up residence for a month if he thought it could win some votes, the Justice Department would be crawling through the state and the media that has mangled the Trayvon Martin story would gladly skip town from Sanford for the latest outrageously outrageous outrage.

Instead, we haven’t seen a single story on the national news about this story. Why is that? Where is the 911 call that NBC can manipulate to gin up the racial outage?

Of course there won’t be marches, death threats, a media firestorm and a Federal investigation by the Holder Justice Department about the shooting in Phoenix about a mentally disabled “white Hispanic” for the simple reason that the “white Hispanic” community does not have an Al Sharpton, a Jesse Jackson or hundreds of other professional race baiters … yet. The “white Hispanic” community has not been around long enough for its grievance industry to have developed as it has in the black community. La Raza is all about reversing the outcome of the Mexican War, not about enriching the high priests of racial grievances. But give them time. Events like this are made for the skilled demagogic racial entrepreneur. Someone is letting an opportunity pass.
If Obama had a son, he would not look like Daniel Adkins.

This is utterly predicable and no one in Government is doing anything but stoking the fire.

Hayes and a 15-year-old Chicago boy walked up behind the 19-year-old man victim and pinned his arms to his side, police said. Hayes, 18, then picked up a large tree branch, pointed it at the man and said, “Empty your pockets, white boy.”
The two allegedly rifled through the victim’s pockets, then threw him to the ground and punched him “numerous times” in the head and back before running away, police said. Hayes and the boy are black; the victim is white.

We have to start asking the question if race riots are supposed to part of someone's re-election campaign strategy.

I suspect that Team Obama is so used to getting a pass from the media that they are unaware that during last three years the power of the MSM has waned and the power of “social media” has waxed ... at light speed.

It happens when you move from outside to inside the cocoon. There really is a bubble that surrounds the Presidency; the secret service, the White House itself, Air Force One, the limos and motorcades, the staff, the pre-planned adoring crowds, the fawning White House Press Corps. They all either like you or want to be liked. There is nobody willing to tell you that your ideas are foolish, that thanks to government regulations and permits there really are no shovel ready jobs. At most, they nudge you a bit, saying: “your ideas are great but here’s how they can be even greater.”

Obama has one other disadvantage: unlike Bush, there is no MSM telling him that he's wrong because they are all on his side.

And if you're Obama would you listen to them anyway? After all, you are the President! YOU have reached the top, not them. Your ideas, your charisma, your energy, your hard work, your intelligence, your vision; you’re right or you wouldn’t be where you are!

Combine that with an ego bigger than all outdoors, a chip on his shoulder that makes him walk crooked and you have an Obama that’s losing his footing and can’t figure out why.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Brutally Honest has an interesting post about Peggy Noonan and her opinion of the American mood. The post has a very interesting digression about G.K. Chesterton which I think is critically important for people to understand as we see institutions like marriage and religion under relentless assault by people who are cultural revolutionaries.

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious.

There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion. We might even say that he is seeing things in a nightmare.

This principle applies to a thousand things, to trifles as well as true institutions, to convention as well as to conviction. It was exactly the sort of person, like Joan of Arc, who did know why women wore skirts, who was most justified in not wearing one; it was exactly the sort of person, like St. Francis, who did sympathise with the feast and the fireside, who was most entitled to become a beggar on the open road. And when, in the general emancipation of modern society, the Duchess says she does not see why she shouldn't play leapfrog, or the Dean declares that he sees no valid canonical reason why he should not stand on his head, we may say to these persons with patient benevolence: "Defer, therefore, the operation you contemplate until you have realised by ripe reflection what principle or prejudice you are violating. Then play leapfrog and stand on your head and the Lord be with you."

This is not to persuade the revolutionary, because they are committed to their cause and have fixed minds, but it is to persuade the bystanders to think before being caught up by the slogans, songs and bumper stickers of the revolutionary movement. It is for them to consider why an institution like marriage has always been between men and women. Were all our ancestors fools and only we are enlightened? And if we drive religion from the public sphere, if we prohibit religious reasons for our policies, make them illegitimate, who is to say that the greatest atrocities are “wrong.” Genocidal impulses are justified by reason. The greatest monsters are not, like Shakespeare’s Richard III, people who are aware that they are doing evil, but believe they are doing good.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Mexicans: The fattest people on the North American continent!

Yes, believe it or not, the Mexicans have carried away the trophy as the biggest fatties in the Americas.

Once the narrative consisted of blaming Americans for gorging themselves on the world’s resources. Unfortunately, as the New York Times sources are forced to admit, the fattest people on the North American continent are now the Mexicans. This posed serious problems for the writer, who gamely tries to emphasize the exceptionalism of American greed by casting it as the sinister number two. “As you can see, in rates of overweight and obese residents, the United States is second to only one industrialized country: Mexico.”

But fats are facts. Pancho Villa has now become Paunchy Villa.

And when the Team Obama, the rest of the Left and the MSM (but I repeat myself) talk of growing inequality, tell them they are nuts.

Dogs Against Obama

Obama's Silver Spoon

Obama:

Unlike some people, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth

At Hot Air Allahpundit comments:

Maybe this explains why he used to eat dogs. Eating horses was reserved for rich kids.

But this concedes a point that should be contested. Years ago when I was on the expense account, friends of mine used to say “I don’t want to be a millionaire, I just want to live like one.” That describes Obama to a T. He’s been given the best of everything thanks to a wealthy grandmother (who gave Barack half a million in bank stock) and affirmative action for a “clean and articulate” (to quote Joe Biden) black man.

How privileged was Obama?
Let a Hawaiian tell you.

I live in Hawaii…Obama went to Punahou. As we say in Hawaii, kids from Punahou are the rich ones…Punahou is where some of the most wealthiest Americans went to school (AOL/Time Warners’ Steve Case, Ebay’s Pierre Omidyar, Cox’s Enterprise Barbara Cox’s children, Dole Industries founder Sanford Dole, Blair Kennedy (Australia’s second most wealthiest woman). Obama’s grandmother was the highest ranking and highest paid woman at the bank she worked at (First Hawaiian now owned by BancWest and has assets of nearly $13 Billion)…sure it was the 70′s and women didn’t earn as much as men, however, it was good enough to put Barry through a school with tuition this year at $18,450 per year…not too shabby for a guy who says he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth…I make good money, and consider myself upper middle class and I still can’t afford to send my sons to Punahou…

I would say that financially, Romney and Obama started at about the same place. Romney was just a lot more successful.

This election is about eating dogs

This election isn’t about Obama eating dogs. The sooner we stop talking about Obama eating dogs, which is something that he did, the better.

I disagree. This election is about eating dogs.

This election is most assuredly not about electing a President who won’t put us in the hole for $5 trillion in four years, or putting someone in the Oval Office who will preserve our tenuous hold on an occasional Supreme Court majority.

It is about eating dogs. And where dogs ride on family vacations. And I will not tolerate any distractions from those all-important themes.
I plan to illustrate this point often, by concluding a post by noting whether the subject of the post has eaten dogs. I don’t want to have to explain the importance of this every time, which is why I will explain it here, once, and simply link it in the future.

Romney 2012: it’s about eating dogs!

I have no idea if the “Obama eats dogs” story was a plant by the Romney campaign. (Oh, I know that it began on the internet by Jim Treacher, but I don’t know if someone on the Romney team told him to look at Obama’s book).
But … it’s amazing how the aptly named “Army of Davids” is able to use the Internet and social media to run with a theme and dominate the popular imagination.

We may be seeing the end of an era dominated by ability of Leftist comedians like Jon Stewart, Bill Maher or the cast of SNL to create a false image of a political figure. Perhaps the trashing of Sarah Palin was the high point of their power, just as Watergate was for the MSM.

Ridicule is the most potent political weapon. Obama is rapidly looking less and less like a President and more and more like an inept pol who’s also something of a doofus. Romney looks like a President, he acts and talks like a President; Obama was always surrounded by a rock star aura. But a rock star is not blamed for high unemployment or soaring gas prices. Obama will always have his groupies, but his hold on the Oval Office is slipping away.

Defending Orthodoxy (Was Hitler born a hundred years too late?)

It’s a characteristic of revolutions that the ones that succeed try to prevent the next one. Once the Russian revolution took over, liquidation of its opponents was the number one goals. Ditto China, Cuba and all the petty dictatorships that cover the globe. The same can also be said about the classroom. The long march through the institutions by the Left has made non-conformist thought a cause for either dismissal or never being hired in the first place.

The Editors of the Virginian Pilot have just printed a message that scientific orthodoxy must be preserved lest our precious snowflakes get an inkling that any of the science being taught in our schools is anything but “settled.” Human inquiry into alternative theories of existence is strictly verboten. And they misstate the Supreme Court to back up their case.

A new law purports to protect teachers who explore the scientific strengths and weaknesses of evolution, global warming and cloning, among other controversial topics. But the need for the law is questionable; if there's evidence of a teacher being disciplined for teaching such things, supporters can't find it.

Strangely enough, the editorial then goes on to self-refute by citing two Supreme Court cases that deal with this issue.
And if the law is useless, there should be no objection to it, should there? The next paragraph is really delicious, citing unidentified “scientists” and “civil libertarians” for the enforcement of orthodoxy.

Instead, scientists and civil libertarians see a different motive: An effort to undermine basic science at odds with politics or religious beliefs and make it more difficult for administrators and local school boards to deal with teachers who stray from established science and the state’s curriculum.

Yes, Virginia, there really are a large and growing band of so-called civil libertarians who are anything but libertarian when it comes to heterodoxy in thought; just as there are prominent ethicists who advocate the killing of unwanted babies and old people. It seems that Hitler was just born a hundred years too late.

And here’s the quote that gives it away: "It hardly needs to be said, but the science in support of natural selection as an explanation for the evolution of species has long been settled." The Global Warming Hoax™ is famous for using the phrase “the science is settled” to make people believe that scientists who disagreed with the Warmers were not real scientists at all but cranks and nuts. Science is never settled, that’s why it’s called science rather than religion.

But it’s interesting to see the smelly little orthodoxies being defended by those who were probably out protesting “The Man” and demanding free speech a few decades ago. There is no one who is going to defend the revolution more vigorously than the revolutionary who has become the establishment. They know who easily the establishment can be toppled once the idea is allowed to spread that it can.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The political crimes of George Zimmerman

Zimmerman with his book of quotations from the great thinkers of history, a man who clearly believes in the old fashioned virtues, is particularly ill-equipped to understand what is being done to him and why. The quotation that he plastered on flyers while investigating the beating of a homeless black man and on his own website, is more apt than he realizes.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is indeed that good men do nothing, but as a corollary to it, those are exactly the sort of men that evil will go after. It does no good to read Burke quotations to a Kardashian society which makes its determinations not on truth or justice, but on its omnipresent need for entertainment.

Trying to reason with it only makes it angrier. Talking about virtues and decency to people who have none either confuses them or infuriates those few who understand the concept in some distant way.
We aspire to behave the way that George Zimmerman did, to contribute to our communities, to defy the conventional wisdom and speak out when we see wrongdoing. We believe that all that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. And we are only a misstep away from being George Zimmerman, from doing the wrong thing, from intervening in the wrong fight, drawing the wrong cartoon or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, a heartbeat away from appearing at the bar of the kangaroo court of stage managed public opinion.
In our own way we are all George Zimmerman.

We think that society should be moral and rational, and that people should do the right thing. But that's not what it is. It's an insane braying donkey's laugh as the thieves, large and small, rob the people blind and then muscle them into a lynch mob to go after some handy victim. It's George today, it will be someone else tomorrow. Maybe someone who even deserves it. But it won't be the people destroying the country, because they're the ones leading the mob.
George Zimmerman has been chosen to serve as a gladiator in the circus that distracts a bankrupt nation from the criminal folly of its leaders, large and small. He has been assigned white team colors, had an NRA badge pinned to his lapel, and is being shoved out into the stadium while the lunatic mob howls for blood.

The Emperor of Hope and Change has already made the thumbs down gesture, the courtiers are rushing out to fix the match.
Like Kafka's protagonist, Zimmerman has been protesting all along that this is some sort of mistake. And he's right. It is a mistake. Had the engineers behind the lynch mob gotten a good look at his photo, they might have pulled back and looked for a better victim. Someone who more properly fit their bicoastal idea of a "cracker" to string up on the crooked scales of Lady Justice. But once a mob has gotten started, it's hard to shut it down.

And there's no real need to stop.
In the past, a media organ that reported a blatant lie might have at least paused on getting caught, but we live in a post-fact society now. The only thing that happens is that the media shrugs and doubles down on the narrative. George Zimmerman isn't white? Just call him a white-hispanic. Insist that Latinos are really white even though your entire practice has been to loudly scream the opposite. Accuse anyone who points out that Zimmerman doesn't look much like Larry the Cable Guy of being a racist. Problem solved.

Zimmerman thinks it's a mistake because he's not guilty. But as Kafka might have told him, guilt or innocence has little to do with it. Zimmerman wasn't indicted on charges of shooting a man, but of being a racist, of being the living embodiment of American inequality, NRA lawmaking and a dozen other sins. These are not charges that he can ever shake, because they are not legal crimes, they are political crimes.
The true charges against Zimmerman are 'class charges', they indict him as the representative of a class, white racists, gun owners and the entire heteronormative patriarchal class of men who quote Edmund Burke, carry guns and feel entitled to trail troubled black teenagers in their community. Lynching Zimmerman is not about putting one man away, it is about putting everyone away. It is about the absolute triumph of the system and its ideology and about putting the individualist in his place, in a small cell and an orange jumpsuit.